Quagmire
by Nyaliss
Summary: An unsuspecting person gets an unexpected visitor.
1. Innocence

Title: Quagmire

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha and all related characters. The idea, however, is mine.

* * *

From Merriam-Webster Online:

**quag·mire**  
Pronunciation: 'kwag-"mIr, 'kwäg-  
Function: _noun_  
**1** soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot  
**2** **a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position**

* * *

--------------------------------  
. . . i n n o c e n c e . . .  
--------------------------------

I met her at the most unexpected place.

It was a dreary day. Thick masses of heavy clouds had blown in over the  
city the night before and the sun had retreated behind their heavy curtain.  
People moved with the quick, jerky strides of those in a hurry. Wise of  
them. The silent skies looked ready to release a storm. I turned away  
from the window and pulled my mind back from its musings about the ant-like  
appearance of the humans scuttling hurriedly on the streets.

I walked quietly to my large desk and picked up the folder sitting on topa good  
sized pile. I flipped it open and began reading. This was normal. Many would be  
surprised at how mundane my life had become. It was nothing like the wild days  
of my youth. I blinked and paused when my eyes rested on a comma. Wild.  
There had been times during those years long past when I had thought I would  
surely keel over dead from boredom; however, it was not always so. I had many  
tasks I needed to do, many responsibilities to attend to and a temper that was not  
nearly as controlled as I led others to believe. I had been possessed of a curiousity  
that had led to many a rash decisions and had landed me in strange, quite baffling  
situations.

I continued reading, deeming the time I had paused longer than the comma required.  
Absently, I pulled my armchair out and folded myself gracefully in its comfortable  
embrace. I emerged from the sea of letters to answer the question my secretary's  
floating head asked when she poked it through a barely opened door.

"No," was all I said in what I thought was a pleasant enough tone.

The expression on the woman's face as she squeaked out a quick apology  
before her head disappeared again made me raise an eyebrow. Females, I  
concluded, were strange no matter what species they were. I closed the  
folder I had been reading and placed it atop the desk. A bare whisper  
of a thud made me narrow my eyes at the door. It gaped back at me. My  
silly female of a secretary had not fully closed it in her rush to get  
away. I pushed away from my desk to rise but stopped when the door was  
eased open a little but further by ibvisible hands.

No, I corrected, not invisible hands. Tiny hands. A small head poked  
cautiously through the doorway. Slowly, warily, the rest of the child  
slid into my office. It was a little girl of about four or five. She  
wore a blue and white dress, white socks with frills of silk around the  
ankles and black shoes. Her black hair were in two pigtails on either  
side of her head, held back by a pair of blue ribbons. She was. . . cute.  
I felt my chest tighten as I watched her glance around with wide curious  
eyes. She was bent a little at the waist, her small hands clasped together  
in front of her and her lips pursed as she searched for whatever it was  
she was missing.

I glanced down and there, resting harmlessly against my right shoe, was a  
small colorful ball the size of a large coin. I bent down to pick it up  
and when I straightened, found myself pinned to my chair by a blue-grey  
gaze.

Recognition struck me.

She wasn't a pretty child.

She was beautiful.

I saw a hint of uncertainty in her face before it was replaced by a shy  
smile when she caught sight of the toy held loosely in my hand. My breath  
caught at my throat and my heart twisted with an emotion I had rarely felt.

I stood up slowly, carefully, hoping I wouldn't frighten her away as I  
walked around my desk and to her side. I towered over her, but she did not  
move away. She merely tilted her head up towards me, expectation written in  
her endless eyes. I quickly dropped to one knee, reaching out with my free  
hand to brush my fingers against her delicate neck. I didn't want to cause  
her discomfort.

We stared at each other in silence for too short of an eternity. I did not  
know what she thought, I could not even begin to guess. I was too caught up  
in my own emotions which were roaring in my ears.

I had not forgotten.

Only weak hearts forget.

And though I mourned, wept and hurt still, I was grateful my heart was strong.

It helped me remember.

The little girl's face was so achingly familiar and yet different. Though  
childishly round and still not fully developed, I saw the promise of the  
beauty she would one day possess. Her eyes were the same. Wise even so young,  
patient, gentle, warm, and innocent. It was an innocence she would never lose.

I held out the ball to her. Her eyes focused on the toy and she reached for  
it. Her small, chubby fingers closed around it and mine. They were sticky  
as if she'd been eating sweets and had not washed her hands. That made me  
smile. The answering smile I received broke my heart.

I knew that smile.

I'd worked to see it countless times. I knew I missed it. I just didn't  
realize how desperate I truly was to see it again. I stared at her, unable  
to form words even as I released her toy back to her keeping. She cupped  
it in both hands and cradled it to her chest. I expected her to turn and  
run back out the room. She stayed.

I cleared my throat, nervous for the first time in a very, very long time.

"Hello," I said. I was surprised to find my voice was strong and held no  
hint of the turmoil roiling through me.

"Hello!" she echoed. Her voice was much higher than I remembered, but it was  
still very much her. She held out one of her sticky hands and happily grabbed mine.  
"You have pretty hair," she declared.

Ah. So that was why she stayed. I felt my lips curve up to a smile. That was  
strangely predictable.

I looked at our hands, hers enveloped entirely in mine. I held that hand as if it  
was a fragile thing that would break and fade if I clasped too tight when, truly,  
I didn't want to ever let it go.

_Do you know who you will become?_

For a moment, another image overlapped that of the little girl's. A woman with  
raven hair, storm gray eyes and a tender smile held my hand along with the child.  
There was love in the woman's face, unwavering and unconditional. I released  
the little girl and the woman faded back into memory.

_Do you know what you will do?_

"Daddy says I'm not supposed to be here," she confessed as if she was sharing the  
biggest secret in the world.

I couldn't help the laugh that escaped from my lips. She'd always been able to do that.  
"I won't tell if you won't," I told her.

Her slim brows furrowed, then smoothed. She held up a pinky to me. "Pinky swear?"  
she asked.

_Do you know what you will mean to me?_

The many times I had been asked that question in the same tone, with the same inflection  
and a different voice made me tremble ever so slightly as I twined my pinky with hers.

"Pinky swear," I confirmed.

I was rewarded with another blindingly sunny smile. She pulled away and I reigned in the  
sudden mindless desire to grab her. I could do it. I could keep her with me for the rest  
of her days beginning with this one. I had the power to. I had the strength to.

But I couldn't.

This girl child had to grow up free.

I wanted to tell her she belonged to me, with me, even knowing that her mind would not yet  
comprehend, but I didn't. I wouldn't interfere even though I wished with everything that  
I was and would ever become that I could. But I knew that if I did, my greatest fear would  
come to pass.

I would lose her.

If I kept her with me now, I would lose her.

If I let her go, grow and then sweep her off her feet and love her in the here and the now, I  
would still lose her.

I watched her go to my door, struggling to keep myself on one knee on my office's carpeted  
floor. My eyes burned, my throat ached as if I'd been screaming for hours without pause or  
a sip of water. The emotions of joy and grief battled for dominance. Joy because no matter  
how different the circumstances and the girl, she was back in my life. Grief because I knew  
that I had to lose her to love her and have her love me the way I remembered.

I wanted to weep.

"Kagome," I said instead.

The little girl stopped and turned to look at me with innocent inquiry.

I wanted to tell her to be careful, to grow strong and brave and wonderful like I knew she would.  
I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, that there would be times when she would  
be hurt and she would cry and it would seem as if there was no hope, but it would be better.  
I wanted to tell her she would be happy, that many she would love many and they would love her  
in return.

I wanted to ask her to forgive an arrogant, stubborn fool of a taiyoukai who loved her more than life.

"I'll come see you again," she said when it became apparent I wouldn't speak. "It'll be our secret!"

She giggled, waved and disappeared out the door.

She left me.

I felt the sudden, familiar loss.

Knowing the lifetime of love, of happiness, that I remembered would not be possible if I stayed in her  
life in this time did not help ease the ache.

I wasn't willing to change the past.

I lowered my face in my hands.

But I still wanted a future.

- e n d -

. . . or maybe a beginning?. . .

* * *

-----------------------  
Author's Notes:  
-----------------------

I was thinking while I driving home this afternoon. . . So here's my list:

1. I've read many stories about Sesshoumaru surviving to the future and he and Kagome falling in love  
then.

2. So. . . supposing the taiyoukai did survive to present time and he and Kagome did fall in love, but they  
did so in the past. Kagome stays in the past with Sesshoumaru and they live happily, until she passes  
away. You see, I think Kagome's humanity, her mortality, is what makes a Kag-Sess lovestory unique.

3. Then one day, an unsuspecting Sesshoumaru meets the little girl who would become the woman  
he would fall in love with.

And I shall leave it at that and consider picking up this line of thought again later.

- 14 January 05 -


	2. Comfort

Quagmire

Disclaimer: If Inuyasha was mine. . . Oh the things I'd do. But it's not and so I   
must behave.

From Merriam-Webster Online:   
**quag·mire **  
Pronunciation: 'kwag-"mIr, 'kwäg-  
Function: noun  
1 : soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot  
**2 : a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position**

. . . c o m f o r t . . .

She never came back.

I waited for her. Every time my door opened, I looked to see if I would be greeted  
with that hauntingly familiar smile. I told myself time and time again that I was being  
silly, foolish, as sentimental as a blubbering female. The fact still remained that I  
waited for her.

I am sure she would have returned had she been given the chance, but when I  
finally inquired about one Higurashi-san who worked for me, I found out that he  
had taken ill. He had never had the chance to take his precious little girl to work  
with him again for he died soon after that overcast afternoon I'd asked my new  
secretary about his whereabouts.

I would have gladly kept the secretary who had left my office door open that day  
simply because she had provided a way for a child to come into my life, but the  
woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She shook like a leaf and   
always looked as if some large predator had her cornered and was going to devour  
her. I decided to let her go. Strangely enough, this new secretary of mine was  
developing the same scared look in her eyes. I wondered, remotely, why.

No, Kagome never came back to my office.

But I did see her again.

I, like many of my employees, went to the Higurashi shrine to express my sympathy  
and pay my respects. I could do no less. I would honor him and thank him for  
the gift he had given the world in the form of his firstborn child. Furthermore, he  
was the father of the woman who had been my mate. It was disturbing to think  
of her in the past tense when I knew that she was still little more than a babe with  
decades ahead of her.

My past was her future. Her past was mine.

It was a bittersweet thought that I could watch her grow.

After a short conversation with Kagome's grieving mother and an even shorter one  
with her grandfather, I turned my attention to finding the girl. It was not hard. For  
a youkai with my abilities, it was the simplest thing to do.

I found her sitting beneath a sakura tree just outside the main temple, an orange  
fluff curled on her lap. She was staring straight ahead, expression empty and eyes  
distant. I lowered myself to the ground so I was sitting an arm's length away from  
her. I did not want to intrude. I would stay for a bit and enjoy her scent, laced as   
it was with her sorrow, and bask in the glow of her soul. If she chose to ignore me,  
I would leave.

She was a child, yes, but I would respect her wish to be left alone if that was what  
she wanted. I knew she didn't fully understand what had happened. All she could  
grasp was that her beloved father would never come home again, would never  
hug her or kiss her or even scold her again. 

"I'm sorry."

The words, spoken in a barely audible whisper caused me to whip around so  
quickly it must have seemed I didn't move. I simply went from one position to  
another. 

I stared at the little girl clutching a silent kitten to her chest next to me. Her eyes  
were suspiciously bright and I could smell the unshed tears that were trembling in  
their corners. I blinked slowly. I did not understand why she was apologizing.

"I said I would come back," she reminded me, guilt sweeping over her tiny features.

Oh.

To say I was stunned would be putting it mildly.

I continued to stare at her in silent amazement. I was supposed to be the one  
expressing my heartfelt regret. I was supposed to be the one apologizing for the  
cruelty and injustice of life for taking away the father of such a brilliant girl. Why  
then was she asking for forgiveness for a promise she could not keep because she  
was too young to control the circumstances?

Because, really, the circumstances would always have control of her.

"You're not my friend anymore?" she asked, worry scrunching up her face.

"No," I said quickly before any of her tears could fall. "I mean, yes we are still  
friends. Do not apologize," I told her, wincing inwardly when the last fell out of  
my mouth as a command.

She gave me a watery offering of a smile.

In that moment, she was everything I had loved and lost.

She was Rin who had tended my wounds, who had followed me through the  
wilderness with bare feet and a tinkling laugh, who had found everything of beauty  
was for her Sesshoumaru-sama and who had loved me with the undivided   
adoration only a daughter possessed for her father. She was Rin who had died  
as I held her failing body in my arms, who had told me how infinitely proud she was  
to have been my daughter, and who had assured me with the tenderness of the old  
for the young that she and her mother would always be with me in the heart she  
always knew I possessed.

She was Kagome. My Kagome who had the courage to face down monsters, the  
will to carry on despite a broken heart, the patience to wait until a demon such as I  
bent enough to admit what she already knew: that I loved her. She was the woman  
whose hands had saved the world and she was the child with the sticky fingers  
clutching her toy.

I picked her up, wondering at how small she was and how frail her bones were  
beneath her flesh and the skin that held her together. She was so fragile. Her smile  
wavered and the kitten uncurled and leapt out of her grasp with a protest before  
I tucked her head beneath my chin and cradled her on my lap like an infant.

"What does 'dead' mean?" she asked me, unsteadily.

I closed my eyes and took in a sharp breath. Ironic that she would ask me that.

"Death, Kagome, is when all bodily functions that sustain life cease. The heart  
stops. All brain activity stops. One or more of a person's major organ shuts  
down and leads to all the others failing as well. It happens for many reasons-" I  
cut my explanation short when I found her looking at me with a puzzled frown.

"They said daddy went away and that he won't come back," she told me. 

"His soul has left his body, yes."

"He won't come back?"

I smiled sadly down at her and traced the curve of her chubby cheek with the tip  
of my forefinger. "No, little one, he won't come back."

"He doesn't love me anymore?" she was trembling again.

I rubbed her back in small, circular strokes that I hoped was soothing. "Of course   
he does," I said. "I'm sure your father loves you very much."

"Then why won't he come back?" she demanded.

"Because," here I paused, searching for words. I tried to wade through my own  
remembered pain, my own questions and the answers that eluded me despite my  
centuries of being alive. "Because sometimes people don't have a choice," I finally  
said, the words heavy and burdened with my own grief. "Because he has lived out  
his life and it was time for him to go on to the next. Because, despite our own  
selfish desires to keep our loved ones with us forever, it just cannot be."

She was silent, her young mind digesting what I had said. I wondered if she  
understood what I was trying to say. My sudden loss of eloquence frustrated me.  
True, I was not the chattiest youkai alive but I had a way with words when I  
wanted to use them to my advantage.

"He won't come back?" she asked again as if making sure my answer would still  
be the same.

"No," I repeated, gently. "At least, not as you remember," I added. I wasn't sure  
she heard me.

She didn't ask me to explain. She sat up and clambered off my lap. I felt the loss  
of her little body's warmth more keenly than I thought I ought to have. I watched  
her pluck the previously unknown orange ball of fluff that she had declared was  
Buyo the cat. I suspected that if the kitten could have conveyed an even remotely  
human expression on its face, it would have been one of long-suffering.

It was amazing, really, what a strong-willed human miko and several centuries  
could do to change an impossible taiyoukai.

I rose to my feet in one liquid movement. She noticed this and ran back to me.

"Are you going now?" she asked, absently petting Buyo whose head bobbed up  
and down with the steady continuous pressure of her small hand on his equally  
small head. 

"Yes," I replied.

"Do you have to?" she queried.

"Yes," I nodded solemnly. I was always solemn.

She hesitated. "Do you want to?"

_No._

I didn't want to go.

"I must," I told her as I bent in half to bring my face level with hers. A bit of my   
inner struggle must have leaked into my eyes because she suddenly stopped petting  
her cat and raised the hand she was using to my cheek. The smell of Buyo's fur  
overlapped the natural scent of her skin and made my nostrils flare with  
displeasure, but I bore it. It was insignificant.

"You'll come back." It was a statement, not a question.

I was left to nod numbly in agreement before straightening. Kagome accompanied  
me back into the house. I said a polite goodbye to her family and went on my  
way. 

I didn't want to. I truly did not want to; however, sometimes I must do even the  
things I did not want to do. It was tempting, though, to destroy the wellhouse and  
the well I saw while I was on the temple grounds. It really wouldn't take that much  
effort, but I knew that even if I flattened the well Fate would find a way for  
Kagome to go back to the past. It was her destiny.

I was her destiny.

It was just the gods' own brand of twisted humor that I did not understand. I did  
not appreciate it. I was still the Taiyoukai of the West. My honorable mother had  
not given birth to this Sesshoumaru for him to the butt of some cosmic joke. I  
sighed as I reached the bottom step leading towards the temple and glanced back  
over my shoulder.

"What you're doing is dangerous."

"I know," I replied unsurprised, voice cool and eyes even colder as I turned to   
face the one who had addressed me.

"I can't say I blame you." There was longing in his eyes as he said those words.

"You will not-," I began.

"I know. I know," he cut me off, waving a hand in dismissal.

"And you will not interrupt while I am speaking," I instructed, climbing into the car.

I heard him muffle a laugh. I did not deign to acknowledge the sound. To do  
so would have meant lowering myself to his childish ways.

"What will you do now?" he asked as we pulled away from the curb.

This time, I did not look back at the retreating form of the shrine as the sleek  
black car took me further and further away from it. I could not afford to look  
back because I knew I would have found a reason to stay.

"I. . ." I sighed and leaned wearily against the carseat and closed my eyes. "I do  
not know."

The silence between us was acknowledgement enough of how difficult that  
admission had been for me to make.

- end chapter two -

Author's Notes:   
I finished this the same day I finished the original chapter. Strange, but true. I  
thought, "What the heck! My muses are up and awake and beating me over the  
head with sledgehammers anyway. . ."

Here's the list:

1. I don't know what really happened to Kagome's father.

2. I wish I had some Doritos. I was too greedy and ate the last bag.

3. If you knew how truly thrilled I am that it is Friday, you'd run away.

4. For anyone who reviewed, thank you. If you have a specific question, email  
me and I will strangle and answer out of one of my muses.

Do people actually read Author's Notes? blinkblink

- 14 January 2005 -


	3. Courage

Disclaimer: insert witty version of Standard Disclaimers here

From Merriam-Webster Online: quag?ire Pronunciation: 'kwag-"mIr, 'kw?- Function: noun 1 : soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot 2 : a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position

. . . c o u r a g e . . .

The days that followed crawled by with painstaking slowness. I found myself going through the motions of modern day life without realizing what I had done. Because of this, the weeks melted one into the other like a ruined oil painting. I could not begin to distinguish one shape from another.

I found myself thinking more and more often of a life that was centuries past. It irritated me which made the fine control I had developed on my formidable temper shorter and shorter each day. My new secretary became my old secretary and I was left to wonder why the silly female had one day run screaming hysterically from my office as if I'd just threatened to split her vulnurable torso open and litter my fine, expensive carpet with her entrails. I had simply informed her that I did not drink coffee and that she would bring me a cup of tea. She'd lost it. I had to check myself in the mirror to assure myself that,  
yes, I did indeed still look perfectly human. Perhaps I should hire a male secretary.

I shook my head slowly, feeling the gentle sway of my long hair against my back and listening to it hiss as the strands moved over the silk of my shirt. My mind was wandering again. I was seated in my study, in my house, and was doing nothing more productive than staring out the window that was dotted with raindrops. I should have felt irritated, but I didn't.

Want was a very draining emotion.

I rose to my feet and strode silently out the door and into the long winding hallways of my home. It was a beautiful place with clean lines and gracefull curves. My feet took me to my bedchamber where I sat on the edge of my large bed and resumed staring out the window.

Why did I live?

The world around me had died and risen many times. I watched my lands crumble to the steady march of time, watched the ancient trees fall under the axe of human development and the wide open fields my daughter had so adored torched to ashes. When the age of the youkai had passed, I remained and donned the mask of humanity in order to keep on existing in a society that had dismissed me and my kind to legend and myth. I kept going. Plodding forward to build an empire of a different kind, gather power of a different nature. Decades passed me in a blink of an eye.

I lived.

Why?

Because once upon a time, a young human woman had taught me what life was all about.

I was old and there were days when even I, proud as I was, wished for the peace of an honorable death. I never sought it. I simply laid myself down to rest on the bed I was now sitting on and closed my eyes to sleep and dream. I would awake the next morning and wonder if the world I saw when my eyes were open was the dream and not the one that existed behind my closed eyelids.

I lived.

Why?

Because I loved.

I had spent many days pondering the human belief that to die for a beloved was the greatest expression of love one could make. I found it bitterly amusing. If only it were that simple, that easy. It was not hard to die. The brief lance of pain that would convulse through a body the moment before true death was nothing in comparison to living.

It took more courage, more strength, more love to keep on going when this life no longer held the person one loved most.

I knew this.

I met every new day with the knowledge that no matter how many mornings I saw, I would never wake up to the sight of moonlit hair mingling with midnight. I knew that the thousands of twilights I had watched meant nothing because there would be no one to share them with, no soft touch on my arm and bright eyes to point at a particularly beautiful patch of sky lit by a fading sun. Unlike others who might have laughed through the pain, pretended in their foolishness that their heart was not breaking behind the faltering flash of their smiles, I endured in silence.

I went on with this life with the hope that if the day ever came for me to lie down and never rise again, I would be able to tell she who had gone before with my heart of the things that I had seen.  
I would be able to look her in the eye with the knowledge that I had kept my promise.

I lived for her because I did not want the sacrifices she had made to be forgotten. I lived so there would be someone to remember, so she would not fade away into the darkness of the forgotten.

I did not know whether meeting her as a child was punishment or reward.

If I kept her with me, how much would change and how much would remain the same?

A knock on the door sliced through my thoughts.

"Enter," I commanded, knowing who it was.

"I'm going out," he said simply, turning to leave when I nodded.

He paused, twisting to look over his shoulder at my closed face. There was concern in his eyes.

"Go," I said, gently.

He did not move. I saw the doubt curling his lips and resisted the urge to sigh. I folded my arms at my chest and waited for him to speak. I knew him well.

"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.

I considered it but finally shook my head. "No, but I believe I too will go out." I did not expand further though I recognized the curiousity in his face.

He hesitated, shrugged when I gave him a pointed look, and left with a soft click of the door.

I waited until I heard the muted roar of a car leaving the driveway before leaving the house myself.  
It was nothing too large. I had grown to like the medium-sized dwelling. It was nothing fancy. A woman came in once a week to tidy up and do the laundry, but that was about all the help we had.  
We liked our privacy. We liked being able to drop all pretenses of humanity once we'd walked through the front door. I was still the Taiyoukai of the West with all the trappings that entailed,  
but I had long ago learned that that was not all I had to be.

I decided to walk. The streets my footsteps fell upon were nothing like the soft, earth carpeted ground I remembered. The roads of this time were wide and paved with little to no personality. The trees that still grew on the sides were choked with cement. If they could speak, I wonder what they would say.

I stopped right outside of a small park. The grass shimmered in the gray light with captured droplets of water and the air rang with the laughter of children enjoying the brief respite from a week of rain. They ran circles around each other, some with their brightly colored school bags still strapped to their backs.  
I watched them, my face completely blank while my mind whirled behind the amber gleam of my eyes.

Humans were such vibrant creatures. It was as if the brief span of their lives demanded they experience life in every form, taste every emotion in all its bitterness and sweetness. They were such reckless creatures.

Selfish. Greedy. Corrupted. Ignorant. Cruel.

I saw one of the children trip, legs tangling one with the other.

Clumsy.

The rest of the group stopped playing their game of tag and watched the boy sit up on the grass, his eyes wide as if shocked by his abrupt meeting with the ground.

Stupid.

I saw one of the girls break away from the rest of the group to approach him, stretching out one hand as she dropped to her knees. She touched his shoulder, asked him in a concerned little voice if he was allright. The others clustered around them, a couple of the other boys helping the fallen one to his feet.  
I listened to them murmur their sympathy and watched them resume their game.

When, I wondered as I watched the boy who had fallen throw his head back and laugh with unabashed delight, did humans lose what made them burn so bright?

The little girl twisted around and stopped, her eyes widening when she caught sight of me. A smile lit her face and I felt my heart twist in its place in my chest. I knew that smile. She came running towards me. I didn't drop to a knee as some others might have done. My expression did not even change to indicate I recognized this girl child who seemed intent on hurling herself at my immaculately clad legs.

She didn't.

She came to a screeching halt an arm's lenth away from me and directed her unwavering smile at my detachly curious eyes by tilting her head so far back I was sure she would topple over.

We stood looking at each other for several seconds. Her warmth did not falter. My cool facade did.

Here, wrapped in a wrinkled and grass stained uniform, was the force that had made me see the beauty in humanity.

I bent and picked her up, not caring that her dirt caked shoes would leave smudges on my clothes.  
I felt her small arms wrap eagerly around my kneck as she returned the embrace. She smelled wonderful. She smelled like joy and peace bundled in sunlight. I wanted her to stay a little girl forever. Stay a child so I wouldn't have to let her go again.

She was patting my hair. She had leaned back in my arms and was stroking my head in contented fascination.

I felt like her pet dog.

She blinked at me when she realized my eyes were focused on her and snatched her hand back, a slight blush spreading over her rounded cheeks.

"Kagome!" It was the little boy, calling her back to a curious group of children who were wondering where one of their numbers went.

I carefully set her back on her tiny feet and watched her fuss with her uniform. Perhaps if I encouraged this show of modesty, she wouldn't prance around in the Feudal Era with a pathetic excuse of a skirt when she was older.

"I have to go back now," she told me, tugging on one of my left hand's fingers.

"Be careful," I told her. "The ground is slippery."

She grinned, her eyes twinkling up at mine. "That's what makes it fun!" she declared.

I just looked at her.

"Mama's coming to pick me up soon," she informed me, using the age old female technique of "Change The Subject".

I raised an eyebrow.

"So. . ." she was twiddling her forefingers.

I said nothing.

"I'll be careful," she finally said with a sigh.

I did not quite know why I needed her reassurance that she would not slip and fall to skin her knee or elbow,  
but I did.

"Good," I let my hand rest briefly on her head.

"You be careful too," she told me with all the gravity of an adult.

I nodded and dropped my hand to my side just as she pivoted away to go skipping back to her friends.

I did not linger. I should not have gone to see her, no matter how briefly.

However, I could not afford not to.

-end chapter three-

Author's Notes:

I apologize for the really short chapter after a really long time without updating. I've been really busy and, for some odd reason, it was really hard to get back into the groove of things.

Be kind.

blinks, coughs, leans in to whisper

I got married.

So yesh. . . I haven't had time to really sit and write much of anything.

What else? Hrmmm. . . My muse isn't much of a muse right now. Mebbe I should consider getting another one. le smirk

So, does anyone have an idea who that guy is? You know the one I'm talking about! The one who lives with Fluffy-sama.

Email is my friend.

-01 April 2005- 


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